By Mary Kaldor and Rim Turkmani
The threat of ISIL is too serious to be treated with a knee jerk response like air strikes as the British Prime Minister suggests. It is very difficult to understand why air strikes are the only option on the table. Is it because they are the easiest way to show that we are ‘doing something’? Have air strikes ever succeeded in militarily defeating an enemy without ground operations and without a political strategy? Is it really the case that all other policies have been tried and failed?
The main argument made by David Cameron in favour of airstrikes is that air strikes are having an effect in Iraq. He says that Iraqi forces with the support of airstrikes have recaptured 30% of Iraqi territory and halted the ISIL advance. He does not mention that ISIL has also advanced in some places, for example, capturing Ramadi. However, even if we accept that some gains have been made, the situation in Iraq is very different from Syria. In Iraq, coalition forces are providing air support for ground operations carried out by the Kurdish peshmerger, Shi’ia militias and the Iraqi army. There is an Iraqi state that, despite its weakness, is involved in a process that could increase its legitimacy albeit slow and weak. What is more, coalition air strikes have been requested by the Iraqi government and this provides their legal basis.
None of these conditions pertain in Syria. It is true that air support complemented the defence of Kobane by Syrian-Kurdish and Free Syrian Army forces, but Kobane was razed to the ground so that the inhabitants cannot return. At the same time ISIL has been expanding in Syria despite air strikes; air strikes did not prevent the take over of Palmyra nor of parts of Aleppo. Unlike Iraq, there are no other situations where ground operations against ISIL are taking place. Even though the Prime Minister talks about 70,000 moderate opposition forces who could fight ISIL, in the absence of a political solution they are more concerned with fighting the regime than ISIL. Mobilising Syrian allies on the ground would only be possible in the context of a political agreement, in which opposition armed groups operate alongside the Syrian army under a new political inclusive leadership with the bases outlined in the Geneva 1 communiqué.
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